"Chocolate Nirvana"

Ohmygodsogood.

I went to a pâtisserie today!! AHHH!!! *checks off list* It was wonderful. After our language stage in the morning, we had almost three hours to get lunch and wander the city before our boat tour, so we did. Our big group broke up into a few smaller ones and split for lunch. After eating lunch outside on a table by the streets of Strasbourg, my group found a pâtisserie and did not hesitate to take advantage of it. I bought what I believe was called une jalousie and ate it throughout the course of the next few hours (sorry Mom, I don't think I'll be able to live up to your 'pastry walking' skills). 
The "frosting" that you see on top - that was no frosting. That was thick, almost solid chocolate mousse piled on top of a thin layer of mildly sweet white cake, on top of more mousse and cake dipped in a thin layer of chocolate "paper" casing. It has risen my standards for desserts to a dangerously high level. I don't think there is any way that I'll be able to eat "French" pastries in the states again. Or chocolate for that matter, or cheese, or bread... well, there goes my chances of LIVING in the states. Might as well just stick it out here until I get sick of the food. ;) 
-And yes, I just wrote a paragraph on a chocolate cupcake.

The view from my place in line while
waiting for the boat to arrive.

The boat tour on the river today was pretty cool. It took us through the city on one of the rivers (rule #36 of living in Strasbourg: Never use the term "Oh, it's next to the river" to explain a location) while we listened on headphones to descriptions and histories of many of the buildings we could see. There were 16 different languages/channels to choose from for the tour, #3 was English. About halfway through the tour, a member of our group realized that we could choose channel 13 and listen to the "kid's channel". This consisted of an Australian  "captain" talking to two kids about the city and some of the buildings and throwing in very cheesy phrases and referring to some imaginary bird named Cocoa (which was pretty much an under-cast smoker rasping in a high pitched voice in an attempt to sound relatively avian). It made the trip much more enjoyable for us language challenged students.

Sitting in the tour boat

The day today actually started out rainy again, but as the day progressed, mostly in the afternoon, the sun won the battle with the clouds. For our tour we still rode in one of the covered boats, so my pictures have that in the way. :/ I plan on going seeing the buildings again on my own by walking so hopefully there won't be weird obstructions in those shots.
Today we were actually assigned some homework for Stage tomorrow... eek! Now that it's almost 22:00 (10pm), I might want to get started on that. You can take the K student out of Kalamazoo, but you can't take the K work ethic out of the student! À plus!